In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at a birthday celebration for a Confederation general, record cold weather and options regarding the West Cobb Loop.

100 years ago…

It was reported, in the Friday, Jan. 24, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, that on the Sunday before the First Baptist Church’s Sunday school room had a large gathering of the congregation celebrating the birthday of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. A portrait of the general was drawn upon the room’s blackboard, which was draped with Confederate flags. The opening song in the celebration was one of Gen. Lee’s favorite hymns, “How Firm a Foundation.”

W.H. Bivins’ store in the Elizabeth community was reported that week as having been burned to the ground. Bivins said that he had received several letters threatening to burn his store unless he fired his black employees, but he had not taken the matter seriously. It was also reported that several other stores in the area had received similar threatening letters.

There was also a story that week about a movement to send the Marietta Rifles to Washington, D.C., to take part in the inauguration exercises in March. Several cities and towns across Georgia were raising money to send their military post groups. Rome was cited as raising $1,500 to send a company from its neighboring Lindale community. Meanwhile, only $500 was being sought for the Marietta Rifles. The military group said that the raised money would only be spent on railroad fare, while the individual men would pay for their own food and the group would arrange to sleep in a school house.

50 years ago…

It was reported, in the Monday, Jan. 21, 1963 MDJ, that centuries old rare coins valued at approximately $600 and a .41-caliber collector’s pistol were stolen by a thief over the weekend from an east Marietta store. Included in the loot were 12 Spanish “pieces of eight” with identifying marks showing use in Hong Kong, several 1600-era Roman coins, seven U.S. silver dollars minted in the early 1800s and a 1931 U.S. penny. The thief apparently only selected the rarest coins from those on display.

The Cobb County Hospital Authority, in the Wednesday, Jan. 23, 1963 paper, learned that a proposed 200-bed hospital in south Cobb would cost between $4.5 and $5 million – nearly double the estimated figure of the originally planned 150-bed unit. Authority members were also told that if plans went to the drawing board that very day the project would still not be ready for at least two years.

A blast of Arctic air and bone-chilling wind was reported, in the Thursday, Jan. 24, 1963 paper, as plunging temperatures to an official four degrees below zero. It was, at that time, the coldest temperature in the metro Atlanta area for the century. The then-official, all-time low for the Atlanta area was an eight and a half degree below zero reading and a 10-below mark specifically in Cobb County on Feb. 13, 1899.

Sheriff Kermit Sanders said, in the Friday, Jan. 25, 1963 paper, a specially-trained team of detectives to probe major crimes was expected to be formed as part of a reorganization of the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department. Sanders also said he was planning a number of changes in the operation of his department after the county advisory board transferred the county’s seven-man detective force under his command the day before. Commissioner Herbert McCollum said that a trained detective would now be on call 24 hours a day with county police handling all traffic patrols and regular police duties except investigations.

20 years ago…

Assembly began at Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. on what would be the first of eight P-3 Orion submarine hunters that were to be delivered to the South Korean air force in 1995 as part of a $595 million contract awarded in December 1990, according to the Thursday, Jan. 21, 1993 MDJ. The first stage of the major assembly was a cockpit that would be outfitted with state-of-the-art avionics.

Also on that day, Cobb Commission Chairman Bill Byrne and Commissioner Bill Cooper said that they supported building a new $37 million road to complete the West Cobb Loop. Both said they favored building the road through a relatively undeveloped area beside Noses Creek over a less-expensive option of widening West Sandtown Road.

At an informational meeting the month before, 152 of 241 residents voted in favor of the Noses Creek option. The others divided their votes among four other options presented by the Cobb Department of Transportation.

The commission would eventually choose the 5.5-mile Noses Creek option, which crossed some 15 acres of federal wetlands and required bridge crossings, which connected the East-West Connector in Austell with the Ernest Barrett Parkway Extension in Kennesaw.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

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